A little over a week ago, I had a small reunion with some of the people who were in the same Japanese extension program I attended last summer. We met up at Little Tokyo in downtown LA, went out to lunch, and shopped around the stores. It had been a while since I went to the good ‘ol Kinokuniya book store and Jungle Collectibles shop there (which is also where AnimeTV is frequently filmed), so I forgot about all the great anime goodies they have ^^ I’m trying to save up my money for Anime Expo, but I couldn’t resist this gorgeous Code Geass artbook I found…

Happy Earth Day, from Mainichi Anime Yume! I know Earth Day isn’t as big a day as, let’s say Thanksgiving or Easter, but me being a nature lover as well as an anime lover, I think it’s important ^.^ To me, everyday is Earth Day!

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– George Gordon

When I first heard the name of this series, I thought “Wow, an anime version of a Shakespeare play? This I gotta see!” But then after reading the synopsis and finding out that it wasn’t really a rendition of the play, rather, it just used the same general setting and characters, I still figured it sounded interesting enough to check out. And surprisingly, out of the three new spring ’07 series’ I’ve been watching so far, I think this one is my favorite ^^

And here’s the second of the new spring ’07 anime I’m managing to squeeze into my limited free time, El Cazadar (de la Bruja). After reading about the story, it sounded interesting, though nothing that special. But I decided to check it out anyway…and so far, I like it. I’m skeptic as to whether or not it’ll be able to keep up its coolness, or if it’ll eventually fall into a predictable formula. But I’m enjoying it in the meantime…I can tell it’s a very difficult series to judge based on just two episodes, but I’m gonna try anyway ^^

So here it is, the first of the new spring ’07 series’ I started watching. ::sigh:: there’s just too much new anime to check out, and not enough free time! =P So as usual, I had to pick out only a handful of the new spring series’ that I feel I’ll have time to watch and keep up with. But after watching the first two episodes of Hayate the Combat Butler, I’m glad this was one of them ^^

Well, I finally sat down and watched the last episode of Code Geass a few nights ago. Better late than never I guess. Obviously that wasn’t the actual ending of the series, since episodes 24 and 25 will air in the summer, and I think a new season will begin sometime next year. But anyway, what started off as a pretty typical war/mecha series that was a bit too complex and fast-paced in the beginning, turned into a very good take on the genre, and the series has since established enough unique elements to make it stand out among the fall ’06 series’.

Though it’s not my favorite of the nine (soon to be ten) Pokemon movies, movie 9 holds a special place in my heart because I was studying in Japan in July 2006 when the movie first came out. I was lucky enough to get to see it in a small theater in Kyoto a few days before I had to return to the US. The theater was very small compared to the ones out here in CA and there were a lot of loud kids there, but hey, it was a great experience to see an anime movie in a real Japanese theater ^^ The English version of the movie just premiered about a week ago on Cartoon Network. I didn’t bother to watch it though because 1) Pocketmonsters.net had just released a fansubbed version of the movie a little while before and 2) I dislike the new PUSA voice actors and it’s the first movie that’s using them. But after watching the fansubbed version of it (and understanding a lot more compared to watching the raw in the theater =P), it turned out to be one of the better Pokemon movies in my opinion. So I felt like writing a review of it (plus I can’t think of anything else to blog about tonight ^^,,,)